It seems the president's eldest son and daughter have their own dishonest patterns.

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Donald Trump’s presidency is a family business. His sons and daughters were front and center throughout his 2016 campaign, especially Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, along with her husband, Jared Kushner. Ivanka Trump and Kushner have since become key advisers in the White House. But unfortunately, the Trump children have reportedly proved to be as dishonest as the president himself.

We teamed up with PolitiFact to untangle the truth behind the Trump administration’s lies, starting with Trump Jr.’s evolving tales of potential collusion with the Russian government. After months of the Trump administration denying that the president’s election campaign team communicated with Russians in 2016, this week Trump Jr. used a series of tweets to confirm he'd met with a Russian lawyer, hoping to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

According to the email chain Trump Jr. published on July 11, the meeting was predicated on the promise that a "Russian government attorney" would deliver damaging information about Trump’s Democratic opponent as part of the Kremlin’s effort to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.

Yet just days before Trump Jr. revealed clear evidence of his desire to use information from the Russian government to sway the 2016 elections, he gave a very different account of his meetings with the Russian lawyer. Instead, he claimed the conversation was mainly about Russian orphans and political sanctions, according to The Independent. Then, right before The New York Times ran a story about Trump Jr.’s emails, the president’s son published them himself on social media.

President Trump defended his son on Thursday, saying: "It's very standard where they have information and you take the information."

The truth is this behavior was anything but “standard.” The experts we talked to said the circumstances surrounding this meeting could have violated U.S. federal election law. Federal law prohibits a foreign national from giving anything of value to a campaign engaged in a U.S. election. It’s also a crime to solicit a foreign national to do so, or even to "knowingly provide substantial assistance" in receiving something of value, including information. The emails clearly stated that this exchange was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

Legal experts are deeply concerned about what this means for American democracy. "The tweeted emails make things worse for Trump Jr.," said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. "He looks now as if he attended the meeting with not only his eyes open but also to acquire information — something of value — in violation of federal law."

Earlier this week, the president took to Twitter to defend his son's and daughter’s political conduct. Trump tweeted on Wednesday that his son Donald Jr. was “open, transparent and innocent.” While the president's son garnered criticism for posturing behind the scenes, Ivanka Trump sparked controversy by acting as a presidential surrogate in official meetings with foreign leaders.

On Monday, the president tweeted that it was “very standard” for Ivanka to sit in his seat, on behalf of the White House, during the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. The president’s daughter was a noticeable outlier at the table, an unelected and inexperienced representative sitting beside Chinese president Xi Jinping, British prime minister Theresa May, and Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Trump has been widely criticized for engaging in nepotism, aka nominating friends and relatives to key White House roles even if they are less qualified than other possible candidates. The United States rejected the idea of a monarchy when it declared independence on July 4, 1776. Perhaps that’s why this summer, the Trump administration provoked such outrage, inspiring the Boston Globe headline “King Donald Is Making America Great Britain Again.”

It is not at all common for a White House adviser to be related to the president himself, much less to be one of his children or married to one of them. On the contrary, former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all tried to shelter their children from the public and politics. Even in cases where the president’s children were more mature, such as Ronald Reagan's, the sitting president’s children generally have lived their own lives, far from the White House.

So while the idea of a White House adviser sitting in on a meeting in the president’s absence may be routine, there is not a comparable precedent for a president’s daughter sitting in his seat and representing the White House at an international meeting like the G20 Summit. To her credit, Ivanka has made far fewer inaccurate statements than other White House officials. But that is mostly because the president's daughter rarely responds directly to criticism and avoids incrimination by staying silent.

Ivanka’s soft-spoken dishonesty is less salacious than her father’s and brother’s. However, she too has a habit of making statements that contradict facts. For example, back in April Ivanka claimed that child care is the single largest expense faced by half of American families. We could find no data to support that statement. The number we did find suggests housing and transportation are more expensive for many households, although child care was far more costly for low-income families.

Paid family leave and women’s empowerment in the workplace are two of Ivanka Trump’s most salient political causes. Yet it is impossible to separate Ivanka’s role in the Trump administration from her own, controversial business practices.
Ivanka has not actively promoted her fashion line since officially joining the Trump administration. However, being a businesswoman is a core aspect of her public persona.

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway even urged Fox News viewers to go buy Ivanka’s fashion products in February, saying: “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you — I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today.” Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University in St. Louis, said this behavior violated the Code of Federal Regulations’ Section 2635.702 of Title 5, which forbids endorsing any product, service, or enterprise for private gain while holding public office.

Since becoming a White House adviser, Ivanka has crusaded for wage equality for women. Meanwhile, The Guardian reported that Indonesian workers in the factories producing Ivanka’s fashion products complained of inhumane working conditions, including anti-union intimidation and low wages that kept them from living with their children. The Washington Post reported an audit showed workers at Chinese factories producing Ivanka’s fashion line worked almost 60 hours a week for only a little over $62.

According to The Economist, China’s political relations with the Trump administration were impacted by such business deals with the president’s family. It’s not hard to see evidence of this business partnership's influencing Chinese domestic politics, too. CNN reported that a Chinese activist was detained by police after he spoke out about conditions in the factories that make products for Ivanka's brand.

It appears that Trump Jr. and Ivanka have two very different styles of distracting from the truth. The president’s son favors viral tweets and conflicting stories, like his father, while the first daughter rarely addresses controversy head-on. Instead, she offers vague statements that blatantly contradict reality, such as when she told Fox News in June that she tries to “stay out of politics.” The truth is she holds a senior role in the Trump administration. Both Ivanka and her husband routinely participate in political decision-making.

Despite all the glamour behind the Trump family's lifestyle, it appears the United States' new ruling family has a habit of making inaccurate, confusing statements. And unlike a fairy tale, questionable believability from the White House could do irreparable harm to our country's international relations. Even German chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly said the European Union can no longer "completely depend" on the United States.